Legal PA : Wimbledon – £30k-£35k

Legal PA : Wimbledon – £30k-£35k

Lamb Personnel are looking for an experienced legal PA to join our client, a leading law firm, based in Wimbledon.
This role is supporting up to 6 fee earners, including the Head of Department and three other Partners. It is essential that the role holder has supported a team of this size before : one to one PA’s will not be considered.
We are also looking for someone with a legal background and they should ideally have some exposure to Real Estate/ Housing, such as land registry searches etc.

Hours of business: Monday to Friday 9.00 : 17.30. 

 Responsibilities & Main Duties:

The Legal PA’s principal role is to provide the fee earners to whom he/ she reports with the support they need to perform the task of providing legal services to clients and help them maximise the amount of time they are able to spend on fee-earning and other essential non fee-earning tasks by assisting in the management and execution of their day to day workload. 
The main duties of a Legal PA will include, but are not limited to:
 

Document production:

• Checking correspondence, attachments, documents, reports, presentations, faxes etc produced by either the PA and/or Document Production Centre before being passed to the relevant Lawyer and undertaking basic/minor amendments if/where appropriate;
• Typing of urgent correspondence;
• Producing and maintaining Excel spreadsheets as required;
• Drafting general and basic correspondence;

Administrative
In conjunction with relevant business support departments, as appropriate:

• Using an effective system such as a to do list/reminders to ensure  task completion
• Managing diaries, ensuring they are up to date and reminding lawyers of meetings etc on a daily basis;
• Arranging meetings, booking conference rooms, refreshments, checking rooms prior to meetings etc and liaising with other attendees, both internal and external;
• Organising travel arrangements, booking and confirmation of reservations and dealing with related invoices;
• Photocopying, printing, organising couriers, sending out of letters, faxes etc;

Communication

• Taking internal and external telephone queries, responding as appropriate and/or ensuring that all messages are passed on in a timely manner ;
• Monitoring post and/or e-mails and dealing with as appropriate and ensuring that all client related correspondence is passed on to an appropriate fee-earner if the relevant person  is out of the office;
• Liaising with business support departments on behalf of lawyers as required;
• Liaising with the department’s absence recorder over any planned absences, arranging cover with HR as necessary and communicating this to the relevant fee earners.

Client relationship management

• Be part of client care team and be familiar with the full range of the lawyer’s contacts/clients
• Entering, maintaining and updating client details and relevant information of the firm’s CRM system;

Financial

• Assisting lawyers in ensuring their time is recorded properly and entered onto Elite on a daily basis;
• Assisting lawyers in the billing and credit control process by liaising with the lawyer and Accounts department, to include the production of standard financial/time reports through Elite;
• Requesting cheques, bank transfers and paying in money received, as appropriate; and

Other duties and responsibilities
In addition to providing support to the fee-earner(s) to whom they report, a Legal PA should also provide assistance to their immediate colleagues in their department and, where practical, other departments.  Team duties will therefore include:

• Assisting others in the department (or DPC team) whenever there is spare capacity or it is evident that a colleague needs assistance with their workload;
• Picking up telephone calls for other members of the department when they are away from their desk;
• Participating in a lunch time telephone rota within the Legal PA team; 
• Working with the PA team to cover PA holidays/ sickness absence etc
• Working effectively with other legal departments and support departments as required;
• And – Any other duties as reasonably requested by a person of an appropriate seniority.

Skills
A Legal PA also has a responsibility to ensure that his or her skills set is up to date and he or she is familiar with the firm’s internal systems and procedures.  This will ensure that he or she is able to carry out his or her role effectively and, where appropriate, discuss any training requirements with the relevant person(s).

• Advanced knowledge of CRM, Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Visual Files, Elite, Winscribe and the Internet 
• Excellent telephone manner 
• Excellent communication, organisational and team working skills
• Excellent attention to detail
• Robust, flexible and dependable, able to take the initiative and “think outside the box”
• Able to remain calm under pressure
• The ability to work to tight deadlines on a daily basis
• Conscientious, approachable and enthusiastic
• Quickly builds respect and trust

We do try to get back to as many applicants as possible, however some roles are in very high demand, and we will always carefully select and shortlist the resumes that are most aligned to our clients requirements; so if you have not heard back from us within 2 weeks, then please assume that your application has not been shortlisted on this occasion.